Before Army, Deptford officer was a karate kid

View full sizeInstructor Bobby Leach prepares to smash cinderblock on
Salvatore Corma's stomach during St. Augustine Preparatory School's "Mr.
Prep" contest in 2004.DEPTFORD TWP. —
The photo shows young Salvatore Corma, shirtless and rigid, his 5-foot-5
body supported at the neck and ankle by two metal folding chairs.
There’s a cinderblock on his stomach and his karate instructor is about
to hit the stone with a sledge hammer.

“I had no idea he was
going to do that,” said Salvatore’s mother, Trudy Corma.

It was
during the Mr. Prep competition at St. Augustine Preparatory School in
Richland in 2004, the year Corma graduated.

“There were 12 people
vying for Mr. Prep and they all did various skits,” said Mrs. Corma.

“Salvatore
was really good at karate. He did a demonstration where he does the
nunchuks and the bo (a 6-foot martial arts staff) ... acrobatic martial
arts-type things,” she said.

“Then he summed it up by taking off
his shirt and kneeling down. He gathered all his energy, put the two
chairs there and stretched out, and his karate teacher, Bobby Leach,
broke the cinderblock,” Mrs. Corma said.

She remembered telling
Leach, “Bobby, don’t miss.”

Corma, a first lieutenant in the
Army, was killed April 29 by an improvised explosive device in
Afghanistan. He commanded a platoon of 40 men and one of his sergeants,
in an e-mail to friends, said that by putting himself in harm’s way,
Corma saved the lives of some of his soldiers. Sgt. Michael Herne said
his commanding officer was a “true American hero.”

Corma grew up
in Deptford. He attended St. Margaret’s School in Woodbury Heights
before going to St. Augustine. He graduated from West Point Military
Academy in 2008 – and that’s where he will be laid to rest May 13.

Corma
started karate lessons when he was 5, at Master Yi’s in Woodbury
Heights. When he was 12, he started going to Leach’s Olympic Karate in
Voorhees.

“He could have qualified for a master’s rating, but he
was only 12, so he taught adults the master techniques,” said his
mother.

At West Point, Corma was captain of the Taekwondo team in
his senior year.

“He could fly through the air with the greatest
of ease and flip those nunchuks every which way,” said Mrs. Corma.

In
his youth, Corma had dabbled in “all the usual stuff” such as baseball,
basketball and football, was quite good at art – “He got that from his
dad” – and played accordion, then guitar. He was also a good student.

“He
was never not on the honor roll,” his mother said. “A Boy Scout. An
altar boy.”

Her son was so unassuming, though, “you never knew he
could do any of those things.”

After graduating from West Point
in 2008, Corma went to Fort Benning, Ga. There, he qualified for his
Airborne tab by jumping out of airplanes and his Air Assault tab by
rappelling from helicopters, then earned his Ranger tab. Rangers have a
reputation for being tough.

“The best thing you can say to a
Ranger,” said his mother, lowering her voice to a whisper, “is ‘badass.’
That’s the highest compliment.”

Corma deployed to Afghanistan in
October. He was able to speak to his folks about once a month.

“It
was tough. His dad’s been sick,” she said. Her husband, who lost a leg
in March, has been hospitalized and in a rehabilitation center and is
due to come home Saturday.

“I didn’t think Big Sal was going to
make it,” Mrs. Corma said. She called the American Red Cross and
emergency leave was arranged so her son could come home between March 10
and April 7.

“What a blessing that was,” she said. “Who ever
thought that would be the last we saw him? I had brought him home to see
Big Sal. I wanted to give him the chance to say good-bye.”

Mrs.
Corma is a telemetry nurse at Kennedy University Hospital in Stratford.
She was at work when the Army officers came to notify her of her son’s
death.

Mrs. Corma and her son had discussed the dangerous nature
of what he was going to be doing when he returned to the battlefield in
early April.

“He said to me, ‘I’m going out on these IED
excursions.’ I said, ‘You’re an officer. I think you’re supposed to send
someone to do that,’” Mrs. Corma said.

“He says, ‘Mom, you
cannot lead from behind. You lead from the front.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I know
that, but you were schooled by West Point and they spent a lot of money
on your education and they want you to be around for awhile,’” she
said.

“He said to me, ‘I cannot in good conscience write a letter
to the parents of one of my men saying he got killed because he was
doing what I would not do,’” said Mrs. Corma.